HARTFORD -- Domestic violence offenders increasingly use the Internet, social media and even global positioning systems to stalk, terrify and monitor their victims, a state official said Wednesday.

"It just keeps getting worse and worse," said Penni Micca, chairman of the state's Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee. "Telephone surveillance, Internet tracking, social media, video cameras, global positioning systems and a plethora of new software is out there. The result keeps getting greater and greater on the part of the victims."

Connecticut's rate of domestic violence has remained constant since 2000, an average of 16 murders a year -- mostly of women, according to a 15-page report released by the committee. During a news conference in the Capitol complex, committee members said that a 2000 law aimed at reducing domestic violence through public awareness failed because there was no funding for what had been planned to be a half-million-dollar billboard campaign.

Fourteen women were murdered by boyfriends or husbands in 2011. In addition, there were 64 "near-fatal" domestic assaults, the report said.

Between 2000 and 2011, 175 intimate-partner homicides were reported, including 153 female victims and 22 males. While the report does not include 2012 statistics, committee members estimated that number at 12 fatalities.

The report has prompted social service providers to concentrate on helping traumatized children who witness such incidents. It recommends that police delay interviewing child witnesses until they are first treated for trauma by an Emergency Mobile Psychiatric Services unit.

Fatalities reach across socio-economic and geographic lines. In the 2000 to 2011 study period, 63 children were present at 33 fatal family violence incidents, the report said.

The report calls for a statewide policy on family violence, which in recent years has resulted in several major legislative initiatives, Micca said, including 24-hour staffing of the state's domestic-violence shelters, the ability of abuse victims to break apartment leases to move to safety, and job protection for abuse victims.

Nora Dannehy, a veteran federal prosecutor and current deputy state attorney general, said that over the last decade, much has been learned about domestic violence and its impact on communities.

"We know that children who are exposed to domestic violence are more likely to attempt suicide, abuse drugs and alcohol, run away from home and commit crimes," she said. "We know that children who witness domestic violence are more likely than other children to be physically or sexually abused. We know children that are raised in homes with domestic violence are more likely to become victims or perpetrators of domestic violence in their own relationships later in life."

"We've made a lot of progress, but we have a long way to go," Katz said. "Domestic violence is central to the issues that we in the department confront every day. Child abuse is 15 times more likely to occur in families beset with domestic violence."

The study points out the connection between children witnessing domestic abuse and experiencing traumatic stress.

"These children suffer significant trauma as a result," she said, noting that the agency has embarked on a five-year, multi-million-dollar trauma effort.